Those questions echo while reading Keith Feldman’s excellent book about the meaning and effect of Palestine in the American sociopolitical context, particularly its interaction with American conceptions of race.

The honorary “whiteness” of Jews in the United States has been a key to Jews’ successful sojourn here, and a key to Jews’ role as a creative intermediary in the American racial categories — an ethnonational group of such distinctiveness that it is its own genus, “White, But.”

That quality of being “White, But” allowed fruitful cooperation and alliances of blacks and Jews in the post Civil War era, when Jews of eastern Europe came in flood quantities to America, and African Americans came to a problematic citizenship out from bondage.

The productive relationships between blacks and Jews are exemplified by the Jews’ participation in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), joint efforts such as of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in the civil rights era, and the nurturing of young essayist James Baldwin in the pages of Commentary magazine.

It is also a relationship that at times nears the patronizing.

Last week, Vice President of the Conservative Zionist organization Mercaz Rabbi Dan Dorsch wrote an article for English-language Haaretz, “As a Rabbi, I Can’t Support Black Lives Matter When They Call to Boycott ‘Apartheid’ Israel.” He used the Yiddish word chutzpahdik to describe BLM’s Palestine position — a word which fairly means sassy, disrespectful, uppity.

(BLM should stop its “misguided steps” and return to “the way of Dr. King,” he preached, unintentionally echoing reproaches King received for “straying” from civil rights by making connections between the Vietnam War and American violence and poverty, in his April 1967 Riverside Church address, “Beyond Vietnam.”)

The historical conflict between universal civil rights and protectiveness of the State of Israel is playing out again in the American Jewish establishment. The Zionist Organization of America denounced the Anti-Defamation League for public sympathy with Black Lives Matter, because of BLM’s public support for Palestinian rights.

ADL explained that it is a civil rights organization, and ZOA’s Morton Klein replied, “We are a civil rights group, for Jews. Our mission is Jews and the Jewish homeland. We are a civil rights group, but not for everybody.”

The 1960s black civil rights movement, taking strength from the example of Gandhi’s Indian freedom struggle and the decolonization underway in Africa, took a new look at the Israeli state in its relation to Palestinians, at the point when Israel accomplished its 1967 expansion of territory.

The 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville parents’ community school board conflict with mainly Jewish school teachers in New York caused some Jews to see assertive African Americans as threats to the liberal structure in which Jews had prospered.

After the June 1967 war, Jewish security “neoconservatives” were born, reacting to New Left identification with Palestinian anti-imperialism with redoubled Cold War identification of US and Israeli power as guarantors of the liberal order protecting Jews, as knowledge and sympathy for Fatah/PLO grew in the New Left.

Belief in a militarily invincible United States became packaged with an always dominant Israel as twin guarantors of Jewish safety.

Feldman presents artifacts in a post 1967 world where different situations become resonant equivalents — African American assertions of rights that threaten Jewish status in NYC schools become PLO/Fatah assertions of rights threatening the Jewish homeland:

“…this suturing of political Zionism and American Jewishness was contingently fashioned, often reactively, in the crucible of late-1960s and early-1970s racial justice struggles.”

For these Jews particularly, when Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali and said, “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger,” after resisting his draft notice, blacks resisting American power and Arabs resisting Israeli domination became a harmony of threats, and fighting “terror” and “radicals” became a priority over justice.

Memorably, Saul Bellow’s 1970 novel Mr Sammler’s Planet reflects the time, where black assertion shakes and illuminates Holocaust refugee Sammler’s place in America, subsumed into the “white” alignment in a decaying New York City threatened by surly blacks.

American blacks who recognized themselves as diasporic communities of Africans began building reconnections to the continent and the Arab world. In August 1967, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) published a fact sheet about Israel/Palestine based on work of the Palestine Information Center of Beirut, causing a major reaction in the American Jewish organizations. WEB Du Bois’ step-son Graham Du Bois gave voice to PLO positions while the editing Black Panther Intercommunal News Service while living in Cairo.

In the New Left and anti-war movements, Jews expanded their analysis of anti-colonialism to re-examine assumptions of what asserting Jewish identity and peoplehood should mean, and what it should not mean, recognizing colonial and racist assumptions of the Jewish enterprise in Palestine. (“Equal suffrage is obviously inadvisable in so backward a civilization as that of the Arab, but is the law in the purely Jewish communities and districts,” wrote Pioneer American Zionist, Jerusalem Post founder and future Tel Aviv Mayor Gershon Agronsky (Agron) in a 1927 report on Jewish development of Mandate Palestine.)

Arthur Waskow’s Freedom Seders, first celebrated in 1969, were an expression of an effort to re-position the meaning of the Jewish search for freedom and justice as universal rather than parochial, and to negate the Zionist effort to “negate the Diaspora” by centering Jews’ life and struggle within the societies they in which they live.

Feldman explores the tandem views of Zionism that emerged in ‘60s America: the national liberation movement of the Jewish People, and an imperial settler-colonial Israel allied with mother colonial nations.

Feldman says that after the 1967 war, and the revolts of 1968 that recognized the limits of de jure equality, Americans of color experienced and spoke of “a dawning recognition of (US) material and symbolic support for racialized structures of rule in Israel and Palestine.”

Jewish radicals allied with Black Power groups as they connected with the PLO, while cultivating renewed Jewish identity — and then in some cases breaking the alliance because of what they saw as opposition to core Jewish liberation.

Feminist of color noted racism and militarism as women’s issues, and the disaster for women and children of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel, calling it an example of war’s gendered violence, especially against women of a racialized “enemy.”

Feldman’s book covers a kaleidoscopic range of American views of Israel/Palestine in the 1960s-1980s, affected by transformations involving race:

African Americans seeing themselves in Arab Israelis and Palestinian refugees; Jewish radicals hoping to disentangle Jewish national liberation from Israeli settler colonialism; analysts of gender roles recognizing the fetishizing of hyper-masculinized military power in the Israeli story; the official decolonization of Africa with the abolition of Jim Crow in the American South; Arab-American scholars organizing to present contrary interpretations of Israel/Palestine informed by their experience, all allowed new American views of Jew and Arab in Palestine, even to question the arbitrary erasure of Arab Jews from the framing.

Learning to question and defeat “legitimate authority” in Selma, Alabama, and expose the “experts” designing escalating American involvement in Vietnam, allowed new scrutiny of the Israeli government narrative of origin and struggle.

A facet of Feldman’s A Shadow Over Palestine is symmetries with the past revealed, which we are seeing recapitulated in the Black Lives Matter statement on Palestine and the Jewish establishment’s reaction.

(Note: In this discussion, “white” is the American social classification. See the 1998 American Anthropology Association statement on race.)
About Abba Solomon
Abba A. Solomon is the author of “The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech ‘The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews.’” www.abbasolomon.com

About Abba Solomon

Abba A. Solomon is the author of “The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein's Speech ‘The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews.’” His website is abbasolomon.com

Posted In:

115 Responses

I’m surprised how lightly the writer treats the ADL, casting it as the good guy against the bad ZOA. ADL only gave lip service to BLM, while it castigated it for standing up to Palestinian rights. That’s why they turned on BLM in their latest attack.

Truth is, there is no major daylight between ZOA and ADL. The only difference is that ADL is smoother and pretends to be a universal civil rights group when they are an ethnocentric lobby group only concerned with one group alone, like the ZOA.

That cover worked fine as long as Palestine was not on the agenda. Now that it is, the cover is blown and the mask drops. Instead, the writer never mentions this and just passively describes them as “supporting” BLM when this isn’t the case, at all. The latest salvo on BLM was hysterical and paranoid from their side.

More generally, I’d say most of these “Jewish radicals” were not in many cases very radical. The same is true of these “liberals” who are only liberal in America, because it is in their ethnic interest.

But being a liberal as an ethnic minority is not a sign of liberalism. It’s just a sign you know your interests. The real test is how you act in situations where your group is in the majority. The vast majority of so-called “liberal” Jewish Zionists are not liberal at all when it comes to Israel.

People overestimate just how much liberalism there is in American Jewry, at least for those above the age of 40.

Very few want to go though the boot camp that is necessary to be a true radical, or liberal. Look at the word liberal; how it has been marginalized by both the Democrats and the Republicans.

To be a true radical in the 21st century, requires that, one of the first things one has to do is unlearn the lies that a person is a product of. And, likely go through the ridicule of being a outsider by mobs of people. For the crowd… for the common people, reason has become, a subversive thought; and thus the radical, liberal, or anarchist is a enemy of the people, or an enemy of the state.

I could only imagine, how impossible it could be a radical, or liberal in a Arab society where communal thoughts determine what is a radical, or a liberal. It would be nice if a Arab could write about this. Did Salman Rushdie write about this?

The vast majority of so-called “liberal” Jewish Zionists are not liberal at all when it comes to Israel…. People overestimate just how much liberalism there is in American Jewry, at least for those above the age of 40.

My experience gives me this same impression. But I’m not sure I’d’ve included “at least for those above the age of 40.” Unfortunately, younger Jews I’ve spent time w/ appear to be just as “PEP” as their older counterparts. But this is just my impression. Most often, when folks who identify as Jewish American say they’re “liberal,” they mean they’re for gay and women’s rights. “Social/Cultural liberals.” But for other issues – geopolitics, terrorism, economics, foreign policy, Israel – all bets are off.

I’ve been saying this to my friends and family for years: The terms liberal/left/progressive often have no longer have meaning. Their used as sledgehammers or false bragging rights. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people tell me, with puffed chests and aggressive pride, just how tremendously progressive/liberal they are. As if they were the second coming of Eugene Debs. Only to speak w/ them in detail the very next minute about some issue or other (Yes, often Palestine) where their attitudes at most melba toast moderate, or actually quite “conservative/right” in my mind; all the while labelling them as “progressive.” At this point, when someone tells me they’re [insert political identity term], I ignore it. Too often, it’s simply completely meaningless. We’re in a time where one needs to be more specific.

You mean like Al Jolson? Perhaps it would be better if you didn’t confuse the issue by racializing power relations. At one time the Irish were treated poorly, however, I have never heard an Irishman asking what would happen if the Irish stopped being white. While skin color has been a factor in determining power relations, let us not conflate the two.

ABBA SOLOMON- “The honorary “whiteness” of Jews in the United States has been a key to Jews’ successful sojourn here….”

What “honorary” whiteness? The Ashkenazi ARE white, cloaking Jews in Black victimhood is fundamentally dishonest, an attempt to keep alive the never ending tale of woe of those with considerable power and privilege.

ABBA SOLOMON- “The 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville parents’ community school board conflict with mainly Jewish school teachers in New York caused some Jews to see assertive African Americans as threats to the liberal structure in which Jews had prospered.”

What crap! There was no threat to the “liberal structure,” there was a threat to Jewish privilege. The Jews were relatively better off and intended to keep it that way, and Albert Shanker wanted to maintain his union power and ward off community control. In fact, the situation involving black and community disempowerment was anything but liberal. Your choice of words seem intended more as spin than analysis.

ABBA SOLOMON- “…identification of US and Israeli power as guarantors of the liberal order protecting Jews….”

“Liberal order?” An empire and a militarized local hegemon represent a liberal order? You are playing word games. “Protecting Jews?” Don’t you mean protecting Jewish power? More word games.

ABBA SOLOMON- “Feldman explores the tandem views of Zionism that emerged in ‘60s America: the national liberation movement of the Jewish People, and an imperial settler-colonial Israel allied with mother colonial nations.”

“Imperial settler colonial Israel” is the reality. “National liberation movement of the Jewish People” is the Zionist myth-history which has obviously had a large impact upon your thinking.

“What “honorary” whiteness? The Ashkenazi ARE white, cloaking Jews in Black victimhood is fundamentally dishonest, an attempt to keep alive the never ending tale of woe of those with considerable power and privilege. ”

Wow that’s weird. Ashkenazi are as white as they come. Why pretend otherwise? I have been ashamed of people who, like myself, are ‘white’, but I can’t change that. Ashkenazi Jews have, like any other white person, done extremely well in the united states because of racism. Are they just figuring this out or is it just starting to bother them now?

“What “honorary” whiteness? The Ashkenazi ARE white, cloaking Jews in Black victimhood is fundamentally dishonest, an attempt to keep alive the never ending tale of woe of those with considerable power and privilege. ”

How could you say Ashkenazis are White, when the white identity only came into existence within the past few hundred years, while Ashkenazi Jews have existed ever since Jewish settlement of Central and Western Europe over a thousand years ago.

Now, I’m not saying Ashkenazi Jews in America are not afforded white privileges, they definitely do thanks to their white-passing appearance and proclivity to assimilate into the dominant white hegemonic social order. But to say they are white is ignorant of what being White entails.

Please don’t conflate how one is treated within the system of white supremacy with how a person choose to self-identify.

Both are extremely significant aspect of society. It’s true that through having white skin, Ashkenazi Jews are afforded white privileges at the expense of POC, for example Ethiopian Jews. This is a systemic condition, that has little to do with the will or actions of any individuals, black or white. Ashkenazis have no say in having such privileges, and can’t really reject them even if they wanted to since it’s not about them to begin with.

In my opinion, how your react to this system determine if you are White or if your Jewish, Arab, Armenian etc. If you are okay with having privileges that is rooted in oppressing POC, and if you are complicit in the perpetuation of such a system of white supremacy, then you are through your actions, white. However, if you acknowledge the wrongs of white privilege, and actively take a stand against the system that enables it, then you are anything but white. It all boils down to choice, it’s up to you if you want to be white despite what the government or society says.

How could you say Ashkenazis are White, when the white identity only came into existence within the past few hundred years, while Ashkenazi Jews have existed ever since Jewish settlement of Central and Western Europe over a thousand years ago.

because ‘white identity’, regardless of when it came into existence, “is [according to wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people ] a racial classification specifier”, used for people “Europid ancestry” from europe. wiki also points out

Description of populations as “white” in reference to their skin color predates this notion and is found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient sources.”

answering the question “Why are Ashkenazi Jews considered white people?”

Since I am one, I’ll answer this too. I consider myself white, sure, socially. And definitely Caucasian. Basically I think of it as like any other ethnic group, like Italians, Polish, Greeks, Russians, we Jews actually are an ethnicity and a people believe it or not along with being an ancient religious tradition. I’m not practicing myself, but still consider myself damn sure Jewish. I think other Jews will know what I mean.
….

Personally I think Ashkenazi and Sephardi , both being from the European continent, should definitely qualify as whites nowadays. If not, after all then what else are we?

It’s true that through having white skin, Ashkenazi Jews are afforded white privileges at the expense of POC

they are not just “afforded” white privileges, they take advantage of them as much as any other white person can, some even moreso and no different than any other white person has the ability or choice to take advantage of those privileges, and yet you want to claim they are “of color” in a general way, a way in which you do not afford others. it begs the question, what color might that be?

Ashkenazis have no say in having such privileges, and can’t really reject them even if they wanted to since it’s not about them to begin with.

no different than any other american who is white living in america today. i have no say in having such privileges and can’t really reject them even if i wanted to since it’s not about me to begin with. why are you making exceptions such as “can’t really reject them even if they wanted to” for some white people and not others. we live in a society that privileges white people — obviously — based on the color of their skin. there’s no other reason whites are afforded these privileges, none what so ever. same if you’re jewish or marlo thomas. if you look white — that’s that — in relation to people of color. hopefully that’s changing and will continue to change but as it stands, we’re not a colorblind society and there are more opportunities open for white people because of structural racism.

“At one time the Irish were treated poorly, however, I have never heard an Irishman asking what would happen if the Irish stopped being white.”

You just don’t know/read enough about the subjects you expert on. The Irish and whiteness has been a pretty worked subject in studies of racial formation. Here is one of the more popular books on the subject:

“http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/305686.How_the_Irish_Became_White” Just google and see plenty of considerations of when/if Irish were/were not white.

TOKYOBK- “You just don’t know/read enough about the subjects you expert on. The Irish and whiteness has been a pretty worked subject in studies of racial formation. Here is one of the more popular books on the subject:”

What did I say? “…I have never heard an Irishman asking what would happen if the Irish stopped being white.” Have you? One of the reasons that the Irish and the Ashkenazi Jews were able to succeed in this country is that their skin color allowed them to blend in with the dominant elites in a way impossible for Blacks. Do you dispute this? The fact that the Irish at one time were not treated as well as other whites does not change the reality of their skin pigmentation. Do you deny this? And now that the Irish have been accepted, I can’t imagine an Irishman wondering what would happen if he stopped being white, although Jews seem to retain this sense of victimhood. Hardly a controversial point I would have thought. Perhaps you can provide some recent quotes from your book or other sources of some Irish folks doubting their whiteness?

Actually, the Irish were NOT ENGLISH. The English settlers who first colonized what is now the US carried over the anti-Irish British imperialist racism structure. For a significant period during colonial period, the English sent over Irish prisoners as intent urged servants (the Australia treatment).

Just google and see plenty of considerations of when/if Irish were/were not white.

tokyobk, could you please provide an irish source in these “considerations”. the author of that book is not irish, he’s a jewish social scientist and geneticist using the irish to prove his point:

that views race distinctions and race itself as a social construct, he is best known for his call to abolish the “white race” (meaning “white privilege and race identity”) while being the co-founder of the New Abolitionist Society and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor. His position is positively stated in his website’s motto: “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.”

so that would be a “no” – you have no irish sources either. the claim was made:

The Irish and whiteness has been a pretty worked subject in studies of racial formation.

in that regard i think it’s appropriate to ask if there are any irish voices in that conversation. contrary to your suggestion, i’m not calling on the irish to prove anything. but your sentence structure “Assuming them to be anything other than Irish” doesn’t make a lot of sense, because i’m sure there are many other identifying features of irish people — besides simply “irish” (like catholic or mother or whatever). many people use the term white for caucasian as i am sure you know. chances are there are lots of irish who share that concept.

i recognize your continued effort to conflate the term white as white supremacy but that’s not the definition i use. it reminds me somewhat of the authors statement “new American views of Jew and Arab in Palestine …. the arbitrary erasure of Arab Jews from the framing.”

although i wouldn’t characterize your framing as arbitrary, as it follows a system of reason, i think it feeds racist conclusions and requires some mental contortions.

This is nonsense –the book , that is.Most Irish people in the US are in blue collar jobs, featuring in fire depts and law enforcement.They feature largely in construction.These are hardly elite positions.

but your sentence structure “Assuming them to be anything other than Irish” doesn’t make a lot of sense, because i’m sure there are many other identifying features of irish people — besides simply “irish” (like catholic or mother or whatever). many people use the term white for caucasian as i am sure you know. chances are there are lots of irish who share that concept.

Well, those identifying features of the Irish people you listed are due to well-documented self-identification. Being Catholic or Protestant, or being a mother are all voluntary actions that most Irish proudly take part it, therefore it is only rational to recognize their choice and identify them as per their own actions.

However, I’m not sure how true it is saying Irish people are white, since white is a fuzzy socio-political concept, and Irish are not really known for professing such identity towards themselves, despite your allegations. I would like to see sources backing up the claim that many Irish use white to describe themselves.

While you work on that, here is a few articles that refute the notion that Irish identify as white:

I’m not sure how true it is saying Irish people are white, since white is a fuzzy socio-political concept, and Irish are not really known for professing such identity towards themselves, despite your allegations.

you seem to forget this is not about “my allegations”. again, tokyobk claimed “plenty of considerations of when/if Irish were/ were not white and i asked for an irish source. thanks for providing one!:

However, though my mum’s Irish, my father is Nigerian. I am not white!

I would like to see sources backing up the claim that many Irish use white to describe themselves.

While you work on that…

i won’t be “working” on providing you anything. my so called “claim” that you’re disputing is,

many people use the term white for caucasian as i am sure you know. chances are there are lots of irish who share that concept.

sila, why would you call the author a person of color? he doesn’t indicate he’s white or not white.

my problem with keith’s critique is that he appears to attribute all the ideas solomon is writing about to solomon himself seemingly forgetting that solomon is reviewing feldman’s book and in that review addressing feldman’s ideas, not (always) necessarily his own. (ie “Feldman explores the tandem views of Zionism”) it’s difficult to deny the idea that zionism as a “national liberation movement of the Jewish People,” is not a “view”, whether one agrees with it or not — clearly it’s a view and solomon informs feldman wrote about it.

No serious historian or historical political economist working in the area of modern Jews takes seriously ignorant sociological claims that Jews became whites as they succeeded in the USA.

Jews simply were not a poor and oppressed group in Europe. They typically formed a large part or the only part of the commercial financial stratum or elite from Spain through Russia.

There were several reasons why Jews formed a major commercial financial stratum in Medieval Europe, but it was to a large extent a non-teleological consequence of the large conversion of Phoenicians and Greeks (the two primary commercial groups of the ancient world) to Judaism as the Roman Empire reorganized commerce and finance around the Mediterranean littoral region.

Jews brought to the USA a higher level of literacy and numeracy than other immigrant groups. Because Jews typically had more movable capital in Europe than other immigrant groups, they brought more capital with them to the USA. From the earliest days of the Spanish Empire, Jewish immigrant groups had connections in major international trading and finance networks. Thus even when Jews did not bring capital to the New World, they had access to it.

Earlier Jewish immigrant groups systematically aided and networked with later Jewish immigrant groups. One could make a good case that common faith and halakhah serving as a universal commercial code had developed into an excellent system for opening new markets. This hypothesis is supported by the experience of Euro Jews in opening markets in N. Africa, Mesopotamia, and Iran by bringing local Jews on board as junior partners.

Jews quickly became part of the colonial and early US commercial financial elite. – yoni
I totally agree that we are elites, and also we were in charge in Europe too. But don’t you agree that now we have to work with POC and the oppressed in order to raise their status too. Essentially we control the system so now we have to make POC part of the system too – i.e free college, free healthcare, free education for POC in America and possibly guaranteed lifetime income. We have lived on the backs of others for too long.

CATALAN- “I totally agree that we are elites, and also we were in charge in Europe too.”

The vast majority of Jews are not part of the power elite, functioning much like faithful followers everywhere. And the notion that Jews as a group were in charge in Europe is absurd. One must question your motivation in making the statement.

As for people of color, all non-elites would benefit from a breakup of concentrated economic power through taxation and income redistribution. And a public rather than private financial system. And yes, free college, free healthcare, and free education for all. Unfortunately, it won’t happen as long as there is an American empire. And Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban, et al, want just the opposite. Neofeudalism and debt servitude is where we are headed. And, of course, war.

The assertion “we were in charge in Europe” certainly does seem like an attempt to twist a statement of historical fact into anti-Jewish myth. The Jewish commercial financial stratum was not in charge of anything except perhaps the commercial and financial niches in which Jews predominated.

Even in those niches there was usually a good deal of government regulation even if many Jews put a lot of effort into circumventing those regulations.

Google a pic of the author of the the piece, Sara Lipton. She’s got a honker.

Every image of Shylock and Fagin, every anti-Semitic caricature of a Jew, has Arafat’s nose.
Philip Roth looks like an Arab. My father looks like a Arab. Woody Allen looks like a Lebanese nebbish. The author of the book Kieth Feldman https://twitter.com/kpfeldman looks like a pale faced Egyptian.

I grew up with a pretty simple idea of races, based on what they look like. There are white folk, brown folk, black folk, red folk, and yellow folk. Green, blue, purple, and orange folk usually live on other planets. (Though one of the orange folk is running for President in the US.)

And there are gradations in these, even if we ignore the mixed people. Some yellow folk, for example, are almost brown, while others (my wife, for example) are as pale as Northern European whites, with barely a tinge of yellow. Some whites are very pale, others are close the to whiter shades of brown. And, of course, some browns are almost black, and some blacks are blacker than others.

Some Arabs are white. Some Arabs are brown. Some are black.

Some Jews are white. Some Jews (particularly Indian Jews) are brown, Some are black. There are even some who are yellow. I don’t know of any red Jews, but I don’t discount the possibility.

Trying to talk sense to Americans? We’re so totally f*cked up by our centuries of phantasmata and our understanding of racism as limited to skin color and defined by the single-drop theory, that we have to produce this damfool gobbledygook about Black White-Russians etc. You’ll observe that a number of people here seem to understand what Simbacruz is trying to say and engaging him in his own terms; unbelievable but true.

“Roha, Most Ashkenazi Jews look pretty white to me. But again, what do you mean look white? Please describe the look as objectively as you could so I along with others could better understand this bizarre point of yours. ”

What don’t you understand. Do you even live in the u.s.? Did you grow up there? Your question sounds like its coming from someone who doesn’t live in the u.s. because most all americans get this. I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who doesn’t understand, but even if you’re not, just speak for yourself please.

What I don’t understand is on what basis does a person’s physical appearance ( as Roha stated Ashkenazis “look white”) corresponds to a persons identity in which he or she choose to live through. Does looking white correspond to any particular value systems, morality, language choice, political views, and system for courtship, marriage and managing a family, among other elements that make up a person’s identity?

Also, I’m not sure how you could claim most Americans could get this, when 90% of them probably wouldn’t even recognize the term Ashkenazi nor do most of them understand what constitute an identity beyond the simplistic labels of white, black, Hispanic etc.

“Also, I’m not sure how you could claim most Americans could get this, when 90% of them probably wouldn’t even recognize the term Ashkenazi nor do most of them understand”

It doesn’t matter. The AWM or AWW isn’t going to wonder if the white man/woman next to them on the subway is Ashkenazi or not. Who would and who cares? The system was based on the concept that white is right and other hues inferior. That’s the way it’s been since the about 1619. You can’t have grown up in the united states and be this unaware. My great-grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee woman who was either married or raped but was impregnated by a white man; my grandmother and mother were so concerned about who’s who it was unbelievable. And I don’t believe they were the exception for their generation (mother was a young adult in the 1940s). They (grandmother and mother) were ashamed of their heritage. I never even knew her name and my mother claimed to have forgotten it. And I know this is a lot of american’s history.

Simalcuz: Round eyes, skin in the same colour range as the King of Sweden and the Aga Khan.

Identity? What’s that got to do with. I’m writing about race, not “identity”.

Again, round eyes and fair skin is not a look unique to the “White” race. Many Latinos, Persians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Israelis possess this exact look you describe. And interestingly enough, many of the “White” race don’t even have round eyes and fair skin, yet they are still considered white which to me clearly indicate this racial labelling is nothing but nonsense.

By the way, the guy you are discussing color with is very highly probably one that had informed all that he is Bulgarian, pardon Rugalbian, with an Iberic name. That may be adding some to the confusion.

I think most people if they were really given a choice, would not pick white as their defining identity. White has no culture, no language, no spiritual system of its own. It’s merely a political identity that is based on oppression and subjugation of non-whites.

No one is White. People choose to be white, just as people choose to be Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Pagans etc.

There is no such thing as an intrinsically white person, since the stereotypical traits of being white that is having fair skin and eyes are found across wide-range of human societies. I know of a huge number of Arab-Americans with beautiful porcelain skin and green eyes, yet you risk complete ostracisation if you were to call them white. They simply don’t see themselves as white despite the societal expectations for them to be white.

Beyond the facet of physical appearance, there is also a huge variance in culture, history, ancestry, language, spirituality, and traditional homeland between whites to the point one has to wonder why are they grouped as a singular people in the first place. Why would an Armenian-American for example be part of a white monolith along with totally disparate ethnic groups like the Irish, Italians, Scandinavians? These folks share no significant common ancestry, linguistics, cuisine, history, value systems, religion, or anything yet somehow they are one White race. Utter BS in my honest opinion.

you know when the British state murdered Jean-Charles de Menezes, Brazilian electrician on the grounds of perhaps being Somalia…or Pakistani Tariq Ali pointed out that about 3/4 of humanity “look Pakistani”

white is not a colour Woody Allen looks no less like a Norwegian nebbish than Lebanese one,

my erstwhile boss for 25 years Dr. Muhammad Shariff at the Jama’ati ad Dawa, Tripoli, he vanished when The US destroyed Libya I don’t think he made it, he was at that 1968 Democratic convention, was it Mayor Daley the one where they beat so many Black people, he described to me walking out in to that melee

“Because I am so white the Police ignored me and no one attacked me” he looked Scandinavian but no doubt died like a dog somewhere, as you seem to be saying Seth white ain’t all its cracked up to be when other factors come in to play, now you Jews are non-white because of your looks? its not your looks its the extraordinarily privileged position of Jewishness within the doctrinal system, Phil Weiss still suspects you all might be clever than us

Americans are very weird on the subject of “race”, looking like an Arab means nothing women, as I am sure your father realizes go crazy for Arab man looks do you have any idea how mixed we are, who ever you are somewhere is an Arab who looks just like you, its no claim to fame. My cousins range from black African looking to “grey’ eyed blondes all pure Egytpian.

There is another view of the story about Jewish involvement in the NAACP etc current among African American and Caribbean folks you could look in to it.

my main problem is that this attempt to gain some kind of absolution by donning the mantle of oppression is not how Black people view themselves, its a very white guilt laden view, I as an “Arab” or “Black Briton” know my history we are not poor innocent victims not just anybody can be one of us Seth all that neurosis and doubt won’t get you far with us, some of the blackest people i have known were little “white” cockneys incorrigibly anti-authoritarian, utterly despised socially, if there is to be couth they are the very definition of uncouth, we always got along fine with them, some of them were Jews, you know the real kind with backbone, substance and principles.

“the oppressed” contrary to popular prejudice is not an easy club to join you will need both acuity and courage and you will be tested, sorely tested do you know how fucking unruly and exasperating we are.

I always tell white people i am black and black people that i am white, seriously, because its true but you need to stop looking at the surface.

there is something that white people always miss, i have been watching the “intersectionality” stuff here, its very funny you really don’t see it, the crucial part of Crenshaw’s piece was

” But the legacy of struggle among US Black women suggests that a collectively shared Black women’s oppositional knowledge has long existed. This collective wisdom in turn has spurred US Black women to generate a more specialized knowledge, namely, Black feminist thought as critical social theory.”

“women’s oppositional knowledge”

the system causes you to misread us do you know how brilliant and realized we are you can only dream to be one of us, better start developing yourself, imagine the shame of being rejected by the despised, we can see you coming from a billion miles away.

don’t tell an Egyptian he is pale faced it will worry him and his wife might lose respect for him

“my main problem is that this attempt to gain some kind of absolution”
Absolution for what? I don’t want your absolution. Jews were treated like shit in the Middle East, but the holocaust is a European crime. And then European Jews still crave respect.

“The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies. We want to emigrate as a respected people”

Herzl craved respect. What a putz. Jews indulge the moral superiority of the victim and claim the moral superiority of Europe at the same time! That’s chutzpah.

You want to have some fun? Look up the history of Liberia, a country built on conquest and Jim Crow. The natives didn’t even get the right to vote until the 1960’s. Now you know why Liberia voted with the Zionists in 1947: Black on black Jim Crow, because the natives were uncivilized and un-Christian.

Barack Obama is called black. If one of his daughters marries a white man their kids will be black too. Jews have the advantage.

And of course there are light Arabs. Crusaders and traders left their mark.

The two state solution is Jim Crow. Binationalism was always the only modern choice. As to immigration to Palestine, it happened. In the US we’re all settlers on stolen land. The question is what’s next.

There is no absolution. There is no god, and people are fragile stupid things.

There’s was no option for Semitic, so in the past Arabs and Jews are stuck choosing between black and white. I think they now have write in options. Egyptians, Libyans, Algerians et al can say African American.
My father wanted to write his ethnicity.

“Semitic” is a language family.
I strongly doubt that your father, or anyone his age, ever spoke Proto/Common Semitic.
Even if his mother tongue had been a Semitic language, that is not a correct answer to a question on ethnicity.
As for his not considering himself “white”, if he didn’t look typically Far-eastern or Amerindian or Black African, (i.e. had the appearance of what we used to call Caucasian), then what he “considered” himself would only tell us that he was a typical American.

1 relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family.

2 relating to the peoples who speak the Semitic languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic.

Semite- a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs.

My father looked like an Arab. He din’t look like a German, or a Pole. He could’ve passed for Sicilian but they’re almost North Africans, so?

I’m not a Zionist, at least not by conquest. The Roma can’t claim a right of return to Rajasthan. My point, and it’s obvious enough, is about Zionist hypocrisy, wanting it both ways. I’m an anti-Zionist because I identify with minorities in the west not with white Europeans. I’ve lived with anti-Semitism for 50 years, from landlords and neighbors to girlfriend’s families, all white Christians. It disgusts me that a Jew writing in the NYRB argued that Jews didn’t look like Arabs. Arafat had a Jewish nose.http://blog.edenbaumstudio.com/2014/11/the-invention-of-jewish-nose-when.html

At this point it’s pretty clear I’m arguing with anti-Jewish bigots, most of whom are white and who’ve found a a way to justify their bigotry by defending Palestinians, as white Europeans now hide their anti-Semitism behind defenses of Israel. As a Polish woman said to me a few months ago. “We have to stand with the Jews, no matter what we think of them.” Herzl would’ve smiled and thanked her. I didn’t smile. I said I was a Jew and I claimed the right of return to Poland. That shut her up.

European Muslims are the new Jews of Europe. They’re the revenge of the Jews. That makes me smile.

this is such a strange concept. why would you think of arafats nose as “jewish”, why not arab? or do you think one proceeded the other? isn’t it just more likely it’s a genetic feature shared by all sorts of people? someone could look at my nose and think i was jewish, or my dads or both my parents actually — certainly my brother! the woman in your link, sara lipton, her nose isn’t much different than mine yet i don’t think either of our noses are “jewish”. she almost looks the spitting image of susie abulhawa in that photo. the photo of your father just looks arab to me as many many jews are (although we’re not supposed reference arab jews anymore).

It disgusts me that a Jew writing in the NYRB argued that Jews didn’t look like Arabs.

i missed that part of the article — which is long. and the passage you picked up didn’t mention arabs nor did a search of her article. i think lots of people have distinguishing noses — including famous people who are not jewish. why would you even reference arafats nose as jewish, it just seems so strange.

it’s pretty clear I’m arguing with anti-Jewish bigots, most of whom are white and who’ve found a a way to justify their bigotry….

ok, take your marbles and go home then. it sounds like you’re saying lots of different things and if someone doesn’t agree with you they’re bigots. you said yourself your dad looked arab and from the photo you published he does, maybe it’s just because he was. of the jewish variety. but your dad being or looking arab doesn’t really say anything about all jews, being white or not white.

|| Seth Edenbaum: … It disgusts me that a Jew writing in the NYRB argued that Jews didn’t look like Arabs. Arafat had a Jewish nose. … ||

That’s an interesting twist.

|| … As a Polish woman said to me a few months ago. “We have to stand with the Jews, no matter what we think of them.” … ||

IMO, no-one should ever stand unconditionally by anyone. And it’s better to stand:
– with people you don’t like who advocate the universal and consistent application of justice, accountability and equality; rather than
– with people you do like who advocate – and perhaps even practise – injustice and immorality.

Stop BSing us. If you could claim Polish citizenship and that was through your father, it would mean that he was Polish. And that he was “White” by the common understanding of it (which ignores the (usual US) “self-identification” nonsense for measurable and definable characteristics.

Which would possibly indicate that his mother tongue was not Semitic in any way or wise, but Germanic (or Slavo-Germanic according to some newfashioned theory) and/ or Slavic. So, no dice.

Same would apply, by linguistic criteria, even if the mother tongue was “Modern Hebrew”, the newly put-together language, based of course on a well-known dead Semitic language.

Your typically Zionist racism is remarkably unashamed:

My father looked like an Arab.

Arabs are people who speak Arabic, a language (a Semitic language). Their ancestry includes the Arabic Peninsula, Mesopotamia, Greater Syria, Berber North Africa, Black East and West Africa, today’s Scandinavia, Italy, Celtiberia, etc. etc.
Which one of the above origins did this gentleman “look like”?

He didn’t look like a German, or a Pole

I see now, you go by Rosenbergs’definition of what a German or a Pole is supposed to look like. And I don’t mean the Jewish Rosenberg. Look him up.

He could’ve passed for Sicilian but they’re almost North Africans, so?

They are as much Norman (Scandinavian), Berber, Greek, Phoenician, “original” Sikels, etc.
I still would like to know what a Sicilian is supposed to look like, in the opinion of a true tribal.

I wasn’t directing my comment at authors on this site, who I think of as more sophisticated, but now I’m left speechless. Sara Lipton in the NYRB was associating the “Jewish nose” with anti-Semitic caricatures, therefore avoiding the association with Arabs. So yes, of course Arafat’s nose is a Jewish nose because it is as Arab nose, but also and this also seems obvious, because 2000 years ago before the Arab conquests, Arafat’s ancestors may well have been Jewish.

I’m not quibbling about Jews and Arabs in the Middle East, where the differences are more theological than genetic, I’m arguing against the racism of European Jews who want to associate themselves with white Europeans, and also with white European anti-Semites.
You do know that nose jobs were once very popular with American Jewish girls, right?
My father had a Jewish nose. He called it a Jewish nose. I grew up hearing the phrase spoken by Jews about Jews. No one ever said it wasn’t an Arab nose; it’s the same nose. It was a mark of pride. Also the dark skin. Even in Jews with light skin you can see it in their faces: Jewish features, Arab features. And it’s not German.

Walmart got in trouble a year ago for selling a halloween “Sheik Fagin Nose” That’s covering all bases.

My Mom used to take wet strips of leather, and wrap them over my nose and tie them behind my head, every night when I went to sleep. The leather dries and shrinks, compressing the bridge and lateral walls of the nose, and prevented the maxillary tumescence from occurring in adolescence. In spite of the fact that I had difficulty respiring, my bound nose tripled my value on the marriage market .
And today, I am a trophy husband.

“If you could claim Polish citizenship and that was through your father, it would mean that he was Polish”

Anyone who knows anything about Jews and Europe, especially Eastern Europe even now knows that Jews even as citizens of a country are still considered Jews before anything else. A Polish Jew to most Poles isn’t Polish; he’s a Jew.

Stanley is one of the examples I use of German Jews who don’t understand their own history. He thinks of himself as German with Jewish religious background. Stanley’s host replies that Stanley is not German at all, even after his family had been in the country for centuries. Google a photograph. Stanley is German in the same sense German-born children of immigrants are German, except Stanley’s ancestors immigrated a long time ago.

German law changed from Jus Sanguinis to Jus Soli (law of blood to law of residence) only in 2000. That helps explain the behavior of his host. it doesn’t explain Stanley’s ignorance and his desire to be a white European and only from a specific religious and not ethnic background.

Edenbaum: Trying to introduce more irrelevant stuff won’t be enough to deviate the discussion.
As I was trying to say, the way you confirm your own racism by invoking that of other racists (the Nazis, now some allegation re “the Poles” (which concern only the Ashkenazi/Ostyiden as ethnic group) justify sending you back to my remark re Rosenberg. We were discussing Polish citizenship, which by your own assertion is your right.
Then, trying to play the pretzel about the German jus sanguinis principle is useless, as German Jews have had their citizenship hundreds of years before 2011.
And of course you forget all the rest. So convenient.

But I realized why Phil Weiss annoys me so much, and why this site annoys me. Weiss argues as an assimilated Jew who pretends anti-Semitism no longer exists in the west. He leaves Jewish insecurity and anger to the Zionists. He leaves the memory of the holocaust to them as well. Weiss et al. allow for Arab and Palestinian anger but render Jews at best, earnest supporters of Palestinian rights.

Jews have been a persecuted minority in the west as elsewhere. After 1945 Zionists used European guilt to ease the conquest of Palestine. All my references above describe the transformation of Jews from a persecuted ethnic/religious minority in Europe to proud European colonialists. The transformation is perverse, and Phil Weiss and his cohorts are no less perverse than Eli Yishai: “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.” And Yishai’s family is from Tunisia. By Zionist logic even Tunisian Jews are white!

Herzl: “We want to emigrate as a respected people”.
Respected by white Europeans, the torturers of Jews. Yishai has inherited Herzl’s self-hatred. I haven’t. I support Palestinians not out of some abstract sense of sympathy but from a shared history of oppression. Israel is European colonialism, full stop. And although I think I said this already, the closest parallel to Israel is Liberia, a state built on conquest. The African natives,”uncivilized” “unchristian”, didn’t get the vote until the 1960s. Liberia was founded as Israel was, on expulsion and Jim Crow.

seth edenbaum……wrote this for your father who you said looks like an arab

i am mostly white by night
a little shadow of no doubt.
the day brings a frightful light
exposed cheeks a tightful pout.
but never you kind
what colour to the blind.
what lies beneath the skin
we are all kith and kin.

“Jews and POC need to stand together and abolish the power structure. Then there will be peace, equality and justice. “catalan

Say Cristobal , have you seen the movie , “Iron man “. Was Iron Man a White dude and was he a supremacist.There is a real good write up about it on “Bright Lights” by some dude called Cristobal Catalan who writes profusely on the subject of “White supremacy” .Coincidence ???.

Cristobal Catalan who writes profusely on the subject of “White supremacy” .Coincidence ???. –
You got me. Still, don’t you agree that the existing power structure favors whites and we need to sand up to build a more just world order where all the races have their say and ability to influence the dialogue.

Jews and POC need to stand together and abolish the power structure. Then there will be peace, equality and justice.”

Yeah, and then, when the rest of the world is perfect Israel will stick out like a sore thumb.
And Israel will be so embarrassed by everybody else being perfect they will have to change, if we ask them nicely enough.

Here’s a pic of Sara Lipton with another for comparison.
Why the shame? There was intermarriage of Jews and gentiles in Europe. Most light skinned Jews look like a cross of Arab and Polish. Look at the faces. Look at a pic of Philip Roth. Use your eyes not your wishes.

Why? Why still kiss up to white power? She wrote elsewhere that Jewish victims of the Holocaust looked just like their neighbors. Really? Do Arabs look like Germans?
Zionists are self-hating Jews. Ashkenazi Jews became white after 1945.

Arabs are a linguistic and cultural group. A lot of Arabs used to be Jews. The closest equivalent to European Jews are the European Roma.

How about posting photos of Natalie Portman, Chelsea Handler, Kirk Douglas, Amy Schumer, Lauren Bacall, William Shatner, Michael Bolton, Scarlett Johansson, and Anton Yelchin, for example? Then we can compare them to photos of Yasser Arafat.

“Seth” why are you spreading all this misinformation about “Jewish noses”?
Everybody knows that the surest way to tell if somebody is Jewish is by their feet, specifically the height (or lack thereof) of the metatarsal arch.

“its not your looks its the extraordinarily privileged position of Jewishness within the doctrinal system, – ” Gamal
Hi Gamal,
I completely agree with, Jewish as I am, I feel like always get extraordinary privileges. Like sometimes I would say something and people are like, that’s absolutely true, I am changing my mind because you said so. I also never get passed up for promotions and benefits etc. When I look to buy something, sometimes people deliberately give me lose prices. Occasionally they even let me skip the line. It is amazing and I just sometimes wonder at my luck to be Jewish, to be so privileged. But then I think about how justice is more important and I want to fight this system so POC and Arabs and Others her their fair share.

Exactly. It’ll be very hard for you when you are judged as an individual person. It is, I must admit, very very nice the way being Jewish gives one a moral, social and intellectual ascendancy.
That will be a very hard thing to lose.

I’ve grown up with anti-Semitism my entire life. As I’ve said, I’m tired of white anti-Semites.
Jews are a disliked minority, not a powerless one. I’ll repeat what I’ve said once already today.
Kissinger worked for the anti-Semite Nixon. Max Blumenthal’s father works for Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton when his wife was running against Obama said “A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags.” What do you think Clinton says about Jews when there are none around?

it is not about white this or black that.this skin colour circus is just a side show.politics in a age of obama.

this is about a relegion called judaism.the direction it has taken under present leadership.the holocaust generation.
we need new blood on the committee.not 60- 75 year old’s but 25-40 year old’s.
with all due respect

I thought they had like the draft there. Like each good Jewish boy and girl had to go out in uniform a year or two and mind their Palestinian hunt quotas. Or, if they were fromm, do it as “civilian” “settlers”.

So now they re-legion, enlisting after the draft. I imagine the re-legion military service happens in the post-67 settlements and the International Zone of Jerusalem or so.

the holocaust generation. we need new blood on the committee.

Lemme get this straight. The blood of your victims is not enough? I mean, that’s like a gallon and a half per person and it already adds up to huge quantities. You now want to bleed those who managed to escape the other, WWII, genocide?

Many thanks. Just as expected.
I asked just because I didn’t want to assume that your response would be entirely predictable, down to the fashionable novelist (not his exact name, though.)
(Also, as a side note, don’t you think your ignorance of parasitology is a bit strange in a Zionist?)

To me, the word white means the color white; the color surrounding this black text I’m typing right now. Unless otherwise specified, this is what it means to me. Having white colored skin, or other colors of skin tone as well, will mean different things to different people. Or, maybe, not mean so much. And may, or may not, depending upon context/circumstance, affect one’s life in certain ways – positive or negative. White is a color.

what i meant was that jewish leadership needs to be led by a younger generation.

you have never read pynchon,s book otherwise you would have understood the nazi reference.

from wikipedia

Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German, later American, aerospace engineer[2] and space architect credited with inventing the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany and the Saturn V for the United States.[3][4] He was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany, where he was a member of the Nazi Party and the SS.

I am completely unqualified to take part in this discussion.
I’ve known a pretty good variety of people, or at least tried, but I gave the matter a lot of thought, and I cannot remember ever, in my life, meeting a black person I would or could ever describe as “uppity”.
I just have no experience with that.

All white people have white privileges granted by the system of white supremacy that rules over them and POC.

amazing information. what would we do without another of your lessons on the way life and identity works. your philosophy aside, not everyone “chooses” a self identity or has an awareness of that choice. that’s something that develops over time heavily influenced by a persons surroundings (we’re not born w/ego). your perception about When people are complicit with this arrangement, they choose to identify as White is frequently not the case. you have a philosophy, not everyone shares it. comprendo? i didn’t think so. while certainly there are lots of people who have white pride and choose to be white there are also a lot of people — children for example — who learn who they are by their surroundings. it’s not always a matter of ‘wow’ i choose to be this or i choose to be that.

it’s not about rejecting privileges but more about what you do with your privileges that determine your place in the fight against white supremacy/Zionism.

there are a lot of people in this world whose mind is in other places than fighting a system of injustice. just going about their everyday lives trying to figure out things like how to best irrigate their gardens or figure out a good diet for their child’s allergies and things like that. gotta go.

Support Mondoweiss’s independent journalism today

Mondoweiss brings you the news that no one else will. Your tax-deductible donation enables us to deliver information, analysis and voices stifled elsewhere. Please give now to maintain and grow this unique resource.